February 2012

Against the noise of citizens echoing their demands from the streets of Rabat, our discussions with Moroccan authorities in preparation of the Accountability and Transparency Development Policy Loan (DPL) were promising – both on the central and local level. There is a strong will to deliver on governance reforms which respond to popular demands for change and an urge to produce strong and visible results in the short term. This interest is also reinforced by an ambition to translate recent constitutional reforms into real change on the ground. On Monday, Moroccans marked the one-year anniversary of the country’s own version of the Arab Spring uprisings. Thousands of citizens joined in Casablanca and Rabat, and a few more thousand across the country , to reaffirm demands for democratic change.

In an attempt to improve government transparency and accountability, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti this week made his cabinet disclose their finances. The public was so curious that the government website crashed. Is this a sensible step towards better governance? A recent paper on disclosure by politicians says yes. Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer (2010) collect data on the rules and practices of financial and conflict disclosure by members of parliament in 175 countries. They find that less than one third of countries make disclosures available to the public, and less than 15% of potentially useful information is presented.

I am in Phaplu, a small mountain town, which is more developed than most other towns in Solukhumbu. There is an airport, and a road that reaches the town. This is also where Sir Edmund Hillary, who was among the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, has set up a hospital.

Innovations in social media, mobile phones and interactive mapping are powerful tools to mobilize citizens and provide people with a voice. Governments can take advantage of the growing use of mobile technology, Facebook, Twitter, and interactive mapping in order to more deeply engage its citizens.

Typical policies to improve the incomes of poor households and their businesses are based on the sustained provision of services – be it microfinance with multiple loan cycles and regular meetings; conditional cash transfers with regular transfers over a period of years; or business training programs which are based on the idea that capital along is not enough – as in the proverb “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life”.

Home to one of the world’s most rapidly expanding populations, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is currently around 60% urbanized. Its urban population is expected to double or triple in the next 30 years. The region will experience a 65% increase of its urban population, corresponding to over 130 million additional urban inhabitants by 2030. Indeed, the region’s average annual urban growth rate in the past two decades is exceeded only by Sub-Saharan Africa, which is far less urbanized.